CO₂ enhanced oil recovery (EOR) has been carried out in the Bell Creek oil field since 2013. Together with the encouraging oil production results, a considerable quantity of CO₂ has also been trapped in the reservoir as a normal part of the EOR process, also referred to as associated storage. Because of the complex geologic conditions in the field, a series of experimental and modeling work have been conducted to better understand the CO₂ EOR and associated storage performance in the reservoir. Effects of gas relative permeability hysteresis and solubility on associated CO₂ storage performance are thoroughly investigated in this study.

A proportion of injected CO₂ remains behind through residual and solubility trapping mechanisms when CO₂ flows through a reservoir during a CO₂ EOR process. Over 50 core plugs were collected from the reservoir to characterize the rock properties. Mineralogical analysis and capillary pressure measurements showed that the mineral composition and pore-size distribution in the reservoir are favorable for residual trapping of CO₂. The hysteresis of gas relative permeability was measured to assess the effect of residual trapping on associated CO₂ storage using steady-state relative permeability tests and reservoir simulation. The reservoir oil was characterized based on pressure–volume–temperature experiments and Peng–Robinson equation of state modeling, which showed that CO₂ solubility in oil is much greater (≥5 times) than in water. Results indicated that depleted oil reservoirs have great potential to store a huge quantity of CO₂ associated with EOR operations, as residual oil saturation is 0.3 or greater in most conventional oil reservoirs after water flooding.

自2013年以来，贝尔克里克油田一直在进行CO ₂强化采油（EOR）。连同令人鼓舞的石油生产成果，作为EOR工艺的正常部分，大量的CO ₂也被捕集到了储层中。 ，也称为关联存储。由于该领域复杂的地质条件，已进行了一系列实验和建模工作，以更好地了解CO ₂ EOR及其在储层中的相关存储性能。在这项研究中彻底研究了气体相对渗透率磁滞和溶解度对相关的CO ₂储存性能的影响。

当在CO ₂ EOR过程中CO ₂流过储层时，一定比例的注入的CO ₂通过残留和溶解度捕获机制而残留。从储层中收集了50多个岩心塞以表征岩石特性。矿物学分析和毛细管压力测量表明，储层中的矿物成分和孔径分布有利于CO _2的残留捕集。测量了气体相对渗透率的磁滞，以评估残留捕集对相关CO _2的影响使用稳态相对渗透率测试和储层模拟进行储层。根据压力-体积-温度实验和状态建模的Peng-Robinson方程对储层油进行了表征，结果表明，CO ₂在油中的溶解度比在水中的溶解度大得多（≥5倍）。结果表明，由于大多数常规油藏注水后的剩余油饱和度为0.3或更高，耗尽的油藏有很大的潜力存储与EOR操作相关的大量CO ₂。